Summer's fleeting good bye

It's been a while since I've written on here...September has been a little bit of a trying month. My laptop crashed at the very first part of the month and we had to wipe almost everything off of it. Thank God I back up work stuff, my music, and photos on my external hard drive. The most recent photos I had taken from August and planned to show on here of the gardens, The Farmer's Daughter and other stuff had been purged. Alas, I didn't have much to share. I had a few things on my iPhone but had uploaded most of them to the laptop before the crash. We had a "hurricane" to deal with...or shall I say a rain storm to deal with. I will admit, I did get all of my preparations ready for the storm to end all storms and I'm convinced that's why nothing happened. I was a little disappointed we got weather that didn't even come close to even a Nor'easter.

But at the same time, with Lake Larson looking as great as this a couple of days before Earl was supposed to come...I was relieved I didn't have a huge mess to clean up.

My passion flower 'McCain' has been flowering over the past month or so. It's one flower at a time and I think we're getting close to the last one opening I bet tomorrow or Thursday. It's a self pollinating variety and we haven't had any fruit set on it. I'm thinking it's not getting pollinated and I haven't seen any bees hovering around it (but boy, they love my sedums!) So, Eric is going to be pollinating this one with a q-tip when it opens soon. I have to give him a lesson on how to do it so he can be the designated pollinator of the Passiflora. LOL

That flower is just too cool!

The most exciting addition to Garden Consultant HQ this past month wasn't of the plant persuasion, rather a deck accessory. Eric was finally able to add the one thing he really built Deckzilla for - a hot tub. I actually found the hot tub and it was a circumstance of being in the right place at the right time. I had met with someone who is now a design client and had it in their backyard. They had just bought the house and wanted to hire me to design their landscape. They asked me if I knew of anyone who wanted a free hot tub. Yes, yes I did. We got it here, hooked it up and lo and behold it works! Eric has now granted me the rights to his nickname of "The Larsonist" because I have proven I have worthy talent of acquiring things. ;) I just say "if you built it....it will come."